How to rescue a 250-pound bear stuck under a Calif. bridge

Maybe you’ve already seen the pictures of the bear that got caught under a bridge in California. Or maybe you haven’t. If that’s so, you really should read about it from our own Casey McNerthney, who, just for fun, got the local authorities on the phone to explain the true-life animal drama told in pictures that follow …

When Truckee, Calif. animal control officer Robert Brooks got a cell phone call five minutes after his shift ended, saying a bear was trapped on the arch of a roughly 100-foot high bridge, he was sure it was a joke.

But then he went to the Rainbow Bridge and saw a bear nestled below the car deck.

The black bear had tried to cross the two-lane California highway on Sept. 15. But Brooks said cars approaching in both lanes honked, and the scared bear climbed over the concrete railing. Somehow in his panic, the bear reached the bridge arch, a few feet in from the car deck edge.

“We were very impressed with what he did,” said Dave Baker, president of the Truckee BEAR League, who was called in for the rescue. “There were scratch marks on top of the guard rail.”

Brooks said about every half hour, the bear would crawl to the edge of the arch and try to find a footing to climb down.

“Everybody, including me thought he was going to fall,” Brooks said.

Baker, Baker and others who gathered at the bridge that Saturday night realized about 9 p.m. there wasn’t much then they could do.

When they came back early the next morning, the bear was still there, peering out with no place to go.

Baker and another man traveled about a half hour to Reno, Nev. and got a 20-by-40-foot nylon net from an Army surplus store. Rock climbers and tree service employees brought ropes and pulleys to position the net beneath the bridge.

The California Highway Patrol closed the road and a Nevada County animal control officer hit the bear with a tranquilizer. They waited about an hour, and when the bear’s tongue hung from unconsciousness, the officer harnessed his way next to him. About a dozen volunteers helped hold the net as the officer pushed the 250-pound bear into it.

“We had about a 100 spectators,” Brooks said. “And there were about a dozen guys helping out. They really did a great job.”

Baker said workers put the bear into the shade, away from the crowd.

“He was still really groggy,” Baker said of when the bear regained consciousness. “I go on bear rescues all the time, to get them out from under houses or off of decks. But this was the most intensive rescue I’ve ever done.”